Despite the tremendous volume and variety of music available on the internet now, not to mention the thousands of CD's to choose from, I'd still rather hear live music than recorded music. Even an amateur, when playing and singing acoustically right there in the room, has a certain kind of appeal that recordings by the best professionals lack.

But these days most live performances of folk music use a sound system, so they don't have that kind of appeal. They look live music shows, but they sound like recorded music. And they don't offer the choice that I have at home to switch to some other recorded music if I want.